I’m pleased to say that Ben Zimmer, a contributor to one of my favorite blogs — Language Log — will be the New York Times Magazine’s new On Language columnist, replacing the late William Safire. The press release:
The New York Times Magazine announced today the appointment of linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer as the new “On Language” columnist. Mr. Zimmer succeeds William Safire who was the founding and regular columnist until his death last fall. The column is a fixture in The Times Magazine and features commentary on the many facets — from grammar to usage — of our language. “On Language” will appear bi-weekly beginning March 21....Mr. Zimmer is the executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com and Vocabulary.com, online destinations for learners and lovers of language. He is the former editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press and is a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. He was previously a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. He is a 1992 graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in linguistics. He studied linguistic anthropology at the University of Chicago and is the recipient of many fellowships including ones from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program and the Ford Foundation. He has taught at UCLA, Kenyon College, and Rutgers University. He was a frequent guest contributor to the “On Language” column, and his work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, Slate and several language blogs. He is on the Executive Council of the American Dialect Society and a member of the Dictionary Society of North America.
MaryG says:
Nobody can replace Wm. Safire.
But good luck to the new person in his old job.
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March 12, 2010, 7:45 amMaureen says:
Given Language Log’s rather constant criticism of Safire’s prescriptive approach, it will be interesting to see what he does with the column.
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March 12, 2010, 9:30 amOrenWithAnE says:
A descriptivist writing On Language?! Savages!
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March 12, 2010, 9:40 amRoger the Shrubber says:
Speaking of things language, so to speak — does anyone know why we refer to dead people as “the late”? It’s certainly useful to have a phrase for that purpose, but I can’t figure out how we arrived at “the late.”
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March 12, 2010, 9:47 amtomhynes says:
How does he feel about the ambiguity of a “bi-weekly” column?
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March 12, 2010, 9:51 amBruce Boyden says:
I hope he resurrects the Gotcha Gang and the Squad Squad.
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March 12, 2010, 10:59 amMatt says:
It’s interesting and surprising that they NY Times has decided to get someone who actually knows something to write the column, rather than just a grumpy old man making things up.
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March 12, 2010, 11:12 amtfkw says:
You know, you should consider adding a “language” category to the tags. I sometimes open The Volokh Conspiracy and think I opened Language Log instead (or, vice versa, when they talk about law over there).
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March 12, 2010, 12:05 pmFreddy Hill says:
While it is true that The Language Log contributors have been critical at times of Safire’s work, I get the feeling that they respected him. Particularly Ben Zimmer.
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March 12, 2010, 12:10 pmReinhold says:
It should have been Bryan Garner . . .
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March 12, 2010, 12:24 pmKevin R says:
I don’t know, but I can contribute a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quote:
“Come,” called the old man, “come now or you will be late.”
“Late?” said Arthur. “What for?”
“What is your name, human?”
“Dent. Arthur Dent,” said Arthur.
“Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent,” said the old man, sternly. “It’s a sort of threat you see.” Another wistful look came into his tired old eyes. “I’ve never been very good at them myself, but I’m told they can be very effective.”
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March 12, 2010, 12:25 pmAllan says:
I thought that Bryan Garner might get the job.
Good luck to Mr. Zimmer. He has some big shoes to fill.
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March 12, 2010, 12:27 pmPubliusFL says:
“Late” here is used in the sense of “recently, but no longer.” Same sense of “late” is sometimes used of living persons when referring to a former residence or position. As in “Harold Ford, late of Tennessee, briefly considered running for U.S. Senate in his new state of New York.”
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March 12, 2010, 12:39 pmLanguage Maven says:
If it were about any subject other than the “On Language” column, the press release would be unremarkable for failing to use a comma in its second sentence before the nonrestrictive relative clause “who was the founding and regular columnist until his death last fall.” In this context, however, I wonder: Was the press release written and reviewed only by people who have never read pages 3 and 4 of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style? Or was someone indicating in a subtle way that descriptivism is replacing prescriptivism in the “On Language” column?
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March 12, 2010, 1:05 pmHerb Spencer says:
Not to quibble, PFL, but we know HOW it’s used, it’s WHY it’s used so we inquiring minds want to know.
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March 12, 2010, 1:06 pmyankee says:
Considering that Language Log’s founder referred to The Elements of Style as “a bunch of trivial don’t-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can’t even tell when they’ve broken their own misbegotten rules,” I think flaunting Strunk & White’s advice is a completely appropriate way of marking the occasion.
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March 12, 2010, 1:26 pmdee nile says:
Or even flouting it.
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March 12, 2010, 1:54 pmbeamish says:
Originally ‘late’ meant ‘slow’, from which it came to mean ‘after the appropriate time’ (which it mostly means now, of course). From there, it came to mean ‘recently’, since looking back from the present point of view, the late is recent and the early is farther back. (Normally, we use ‘lately’ for that sense now.) After ‘late’ came to mean ‘recently,’ it moved on to ‘recently, but not now,’ and then on to ‘dead.’
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March 12, 2010, 1:55 pmSyd Henderson says:
But is he funny?
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March 12, 2010, 2:44 pmLanguage Maven says:
Thanks, yankee, for bringing the Geoffrey Pullum column to my attention. I was aware myself of some inconsistencies in Strunk & White, and I was aware that it has detractors, but I had not seen this particular document before.
At the same time, the instruction to put a comma before a nonrestrictive clause is not unique to Strunk & White but can be found in many writing texts. It had been my impression that all or almost all careful writers followed that instruction, and that the only people who didn’t were people either ignorant of the general rule or exceptionally aggressive about defending the way people “actually” write as opposed to the way they are “taught in school” to write. Perhaps I’ll learn more about why some people don’t use a comma in that situation.
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March 12, 2010, 3:26 pmPubliusFL says:
Roger asked for “how we arrived at” the usage. Which is a valid question considering that the most common meanings of “late” these days are “not on time” (“late for school”) and “toward the end of a given period of time” (“late in the evening”), which might lead one to assume that the phrase is idiomatic. It’s actually quite literal based on that older sense of “late,” and generally used only of the fairly recently deceased. They’re “recently, but no longer” because they’re not around anymore. William Safire recently was, but now he isn’t, so he’s “the late William Safire.”
If the question is why the phrase is so commonly used, I’d say it has caught on because 1) explicit references to death are mildly taboo in such contexts, which rules out “the dead William Safire” and the like, and 2) the phrase is much shorter and more wieldy than any alternative I can think of (mostly parenthetical statements like “who recently passed away”).
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March 12, 2010, 3:51 pmHerb Spencer says:
Thanks, beamish, for both understanding and answering my question.
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March 12, 2010, 8:17 pmShelbyC says:
Love your beer, beamish.
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March 12, 2010, 11:16 pmBABH says:
I think of “late” for “dead” as a contraction of: “late of this parish.” As in:
“Dorothy was until recently a member of this parish, but isn’t anymore, because she’s dead.”
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March 13, 2010, 12:05 amBABH says:
“Late of this parish” was a standard tombstone inscription in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It may be that this is why “late” became a household word/euphemism for “dead.”
Or did it mean “dead” before it was ever used on tombstones?
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March 13, 2010, 12:14 amThorne says:
I’ll assume you meant persons rather than people .
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March 13, 2010, 9:13 amCornellian says:
I think we ought to borrow one from the Brits and call it a fortnightly column.
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March 13, 2010, 10:39 amJohn Skookum says:
Come now, it’s not ambiguous at all. “Bi” means two, “semi” means half, and they both modify the period of time in question rather than the activity performed during that time.
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March 13, 2010, 6:24 pmJohn Skookum says:
Or we may use ‘of late’.
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March 13, 2010, 6:26 pmLearn to Speak Spanish Fast says:
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